nin wrote on Jun 25, 2012, 22:27:Oh yeah, no doubt. It's just infuriating when no one calls him on his errors...

Yep, he farms the press for free publicity with his ridiculous predictions and they always hand it to him every damn time.

This prediction is particularly dumb for one simple reason: Cable companies don't want you using your subsidised box for games. Why? Because then you aren't watching TV and that's what they want you doing! If they wanted you playing games, every set top box would already have versions of Angry Birds, Cut the Rope and Fruit Ninja on them. The more people do things like play games instead of watching TV, the more people think that maybe they don't need to be paying $100/month to get 3 channels worth watching and 97 of reality dreck. One of the main reasons I cut the cord in 2009 was because with all the games I had to play, I just didn't care about TV that much anymore.

But as usual, when he's wrong the press will just be trumpeting his next prediction and ignoring another failure from his mouth.

This will be the last Blizzard product I ever buy unless they completely change the way they're approaching this stuff in the future. If the only way to protect your RMAH is to restrict paying customers to demo mode for 3 days, then you failed at properly designing and securing your RMAH and that's what should be taken away until it can be fixed.

I'd love to see a new take on M.U.L.E. but while this is getting a PC version, it seems very focused on mobile first which really saps a lot of my interest. I think half a million bucks is very ambitious for a nostalgia project but we'll see.

nin wrote on Jun 18, 2012, 21:27:Looks interesting, but it all comes down to price (which they didn't specifically announce). They have to come in under apple if they want to compete, but the fire (granted a smaller screen) and other android tablets have the the lower market locked up, and I can't see MS trying to compete with those on price (instead, like apple, they're try and show you all the neat things you can't do with an entry level android tablet).

I theorised when talking about this potential announcement with my boss today that the reason Microsoft is doing this tablet in-house instead of through a partner is so they can do what they did with the 360: Sell it at a decent loss initially in order to get market penetration, some of which will be made up on software. This is something none of their OEM partners would be willing to do. If they were willing to do that and can come in a couple hundred bucks under the iPad that way, they might have a hit on their hands. But the lack of pricing announcements and having a press event for this months before it comes out is dumb. One of the few things Apple does super well is announcements. "Here's the product, here's the price and you can buy it in a few days." They should have done that here, even if they had to wait until the Fall.

Kitkoan wrote on Jun 16, 2012, 00:09:Amazon Kindle Fire's haven't plunged off a cliff. From what I've read here,seems bloggers and others mis-understood what the information presented was really meaning.

I hope that's true. I really want to see the Kindle line continue to succeed. There's not nearly enough competition in tablets yet.

As usual, the tech press at large proves they're less journalists and more repeater circuits for PR.

There's also been rumblings lately that the Kindle business is in free fall. Apparently Fire sales went off a cliff after Christmas and their e-readers are slowing too as many are just using tablets. I don't know how anyone can read off a backlit screen for a long period but...

Pachter's quotes are as pointless, ignorant and irrelevant as ever. Max Payne 3's development was led by Rockstar Vancouver, a one project studio who released Bully in 2006 and who I don't think started Max Payne 3 until some time later. Even if they did start it the moment they finished Bully (a game which by the way Pachter also wrongly predicted would bomb), that's 6 years maximum. And yeah, anything that released in the same month as Diablo 3 is going to sell less. Also, he's basing this off the irrelevant NPD numbers which means that PC sales are largely not even a factor in the numbers because of how many are buying the game on Steam. When LA Noire came out, it was only on consoles and could only be purchased from retailers.

He also made some claims about some company's financial positions during one of the E3 Giant Bombcast episodes that were later proven to be complete lies. The press needs to stop quoting this hack as if he knows anything, he doesn't.

Bet wrote on Jun 14, 2012, 22:32:Court documents indicate Schilling also personally guaranteed a $1.5 million line of credit from Middlesex Savings Bank of Natick. He also used his personal gold coin collection to help obtain a loan from Bank Rhode Island, a unit of Brookline Bancorp. in Brookline, for an unspecified amount, according to records.

In all, Schilling told the Providence Journal last month, he guaranteed $12 million in loans for the company, in addition to investing $38 million directly.

How much did he get paid as pitcher, again?

An article I recently read said he earned like $110M over his pitching career and had about $50M left. Apparently between what he initially invested and other credit facilities he extended the company, he's actually almost broke now. That hasn't been confirmed but he apparently banked almost everything he had in the bank on 38 Studios.

Another month, another bunch of press outlets touting increasingly irrelevant NPD numbers. At least this article actually mentions that they don't include non-US sales, though their digital sales "estimates" are meaningless since there's no way to verify them. They also still don't mention that several major retailers don't participate in NPD or that the digital sales estimate likely doesn't include stuff like F2P. I'm sure tomorrow we'll read a bunch of "analysis" articles discussing how the end is nigh for all AAA games and this is just a sign that people want to play nothing but iOS drivel and Facebook stuff, forget that neither of those are doing well either (look at Zynga's stock and player numbers). So predictable, yet so old and tired.

When mobile devices can play high production value games with actual depth instead of time-wasting dreck, 99% of which is garbage anyway, then I'll be happy to embrace them as the new norm gaming medium instead of PC or even consoles. But based on the 30 or so games I've played on my girlfriend's iPad, they have a long way to go yet. As for the cloud future, never going to happen as long as big telcos control the pipes and can restrict them without penalty. And if people think always-on DRM is bad now, wait until any and all software works that way.

Verno wrote on Jun 14, 2012, 09:29:Not a big fan of GiantBomb either though, they are often too far on the other side of the industry apologism scale for my liking. Jeff especially used to shit all over PC gaming regularly when I listened so I eventually just unsubbed and stopped going to the website. They are pretty shitty at playing games too which made me question a lot of the reviews. I'm not saying every reviewer has to be a pro but I remember watching quite a few vids where Jeff or Ryan would just arbitrarily declare things about a game due to mistakes they were making or tutorials they ignored.

Well, trying to play a game while also providing simultaneous commentary on it is a lot harder than you may think. They've also made a point of saying that their Quick Look videos are not reviews and I've often found their reviews about games they were down on in videos to be much more positive once they've had a chance to play them by themselves. I kind of remember what you're saying about Jeff and PC gaming but he's definitely come around on that. They do a lot of PC focused segments now and pretty much the entire crew there has their PCs hooked up to their TVs now. Patrick's a raving Apple fanboy which is frustrating but he tends to keep that to his Twitter feed. But to each his own of course.

The way they approached this E3 I like because they said "There were problems that are representative of bigger industry issues" that they spent time on but they also took a point I put in my blog recently along the lines of "Anyone whining there was nothing good or original at this year's show didn't look hard enough." Compared to Tim Rogers though, moss on a rock has an opinion I'd rather listen to though.

Never thought I'd agree with CJ_Parker but he's pretty much got the gist of it. Though I do feel the sentiment this year was more negative in the media than before and with no real good reason. I'm listening to this week's Giant Bombcast and it's nice to hear some straight talk from them. They had their legitimate criticisms but their impressions generally were "there was a lot of awesome stuff, stop whining guys." But Kotaku will do whatever to drive clicks, including letting that hack Tim Rogers spew his pretentious text walls. Who the fuck is this guy to apologize for E3? It's not his show. Shut up Tim, you don't matter.

Dev wrote on Jun 12, 2012, 12:17:If you've read anything at all about them, or the threads that talk about their games, they are mostly doing the "remakes" to try and draw attention to their digital distribution platform beamdog. Which is why the games are ONLY sold through that. They probably got the remake IP's super cheap off of interplay. If you looked into their remake of MDK2, you'll find it wasn't really changed much, and bugs from the first version weren't fixed. BG EE is likely to be the same, just a thinned down coat of old paint. They were bragging about how they were redoing the main menu to work in a higher resolution. Likely the real reason they are redoing the menu is because they are doing an ipad version. Which version do you think will get more attention? My bets on the ipad one. Also a quick check of the beamdog forum about BG EE, and the impression I got about beamdog was "we can't be bothered to read through the posts." I did see a post from them mentioning they are still working through contract issues with bioware, so my guess is the game isn't close to being released.

Yeah, they bungled that release pretty good. They announced it, went dark for a long time, then spent like a month pimping the iOS version super hard (talking about how they're updating it for touch and it's somehow best played on an iPad etc.) and not even making a peep about the PC version except for one mention on their site, then went completely dark again and we've heard nothing. Given that you can get the games cheaper on GOG and there's mods that already add far more content and features to them than Beamdog's promising, I'm not overly confident they'll be worth it even when they do come out. Might be cool on the iPad if they do it right. Maybe.

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jun 12, 2012, 11:53:I'm glad they're doing mod tools. This game ought to be great. Now we just have to see if they can execute all their ambition on a small budget.

That and while I know this is a passion project for inXile and they're committed to doing it right, that team hasn't had a great track record with the projects they've put out. The Bard's Tale update thing was OK, Hunted was pretty bad, Choplifter HD was mediocre at best and I can't really comment on all their casual stuff from their Sparkworkz team. I backed this and I'm stoked, I just hope it gets the polish it needs.

nin wrote on Jun 12, 2012, 13:16:This project is also been a bit bumpy, update wise (confusion in tiers, extremely frequent updates to the point that people got tired of hearing about it, etc) and I will tell you that since they just got in range of their goal yesterday (and one of the people who was handing most of the KS stuff had a death in the family and had to step away for a few days), that stretch goals will be announced and supported via paypal, post KS funding. I'm not wild about that (at all - I feel like once your KS window closes, you shouldn't turn around and ask for MORE money from the same people), but that's their plan, apparently.

Yeah, this "social media expert" they're working with sounds like a good guy but their campaign wasn't handled in the most ideal way. I unsubbed from updates because there were sometimes 4 or 5 a day going out, often without a lot of useful info in them. They felt like they were just rapid firing little bits out to keep people reminded that they exist. I really do like some of the things they did to keep people interested like the Ken Williams interview and commentaries, those were really unique and cool. The whole stretch goals after the campaign closes does sound a bit weird but as long as it's optional, that's all good. I probably won't pitch in to them. I just really hope they can assemble a good team and make another awesome game. But that's the hope with all of the way too many projects I've backed.

Very happy to see this. I thought their goal was a bit too ambitious and it looked for a while like they weren't going to hit it but people rallied at the last minute. I can't wait to see what these guys make.